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angles.
    “Needs more drip,” Lisa commented almost to herself. “Hey there, Tori.” She gave me a friendly glance, then focused on her art again.
    “Okay,” she said, finally satisfied, “you’re in car six.”
    Bennie obediently got up and picked a path through the high grass to the next field. “See ya later, Scotty!” She waved, her ponytail flying over her shoulder as she marched through the underbrush to her site. I watched as her pocket mask smacked against her thigh where it hung from her hip-slung belt.
    “Welcome to moulage.” Lisa gestured to the now-empty seat before her with a hand full of red paint. “Next victim. Tori?”
    I shrugged. “So…what am I going to be?”
    “Ah,” Lisa drawled, and pulled a slip of paper out of an inner jacket pocket, “you…will be an unconscious, facedown, backseat immobilization case—you’re gonna lie between the benches and…” she continued reading, “your special surprise will be”—and she looked up at me—“a sucking chest wound.”
    When she was done with the magic of moulage, I was the walking wounded, complete with facial bruises and red stains on my shirt, a screwdriver stuck to it to re-create the puncture, and a little slip of paper pinned to it that described my presenting vital signs. I walked to my site, car five.
    “Okay,” Jack, one of our many practical session instructors, said when I arrived, “you get in the back here and…” He explained what was supposed to happen as I squeezed into an old Ford Escort. As I slid along the threadbare carpeting and settled on my side, I was relieved there was no glass on the floor. The hump in the middle of the floor dug into my ribs, and I adjusted my gear belt so that nothing would jab me or get in the way of the immobilization techniques our rescuers might employ.
    Feet popped in the window opposite my head as my favorite study pal Roy joined me; he was a passenger who’d been thrown from the backseat over the front, head resting on the dash.
    “Hi, Scotty!” he said, his voice muffled as he stuck himself in place.
    “Hey, Roy! How do you feel?”
    “I feel snug!” he singsonged, and we both laughed from our uncomfortable positions in the car. Although it felt like longer, in five minutes, at most, we heard voices.
    “They’re in here!” a male voice called. Within seconds, someone reached in over my head and cradled my skull with their fingertips to stabilize my neck while someone else smashed through the back window. On a three count they rolled my body as a single unit an inch or so forward until they could place a long backboard behind me.
    A collar slipped in place around my neck, and one by one, I felt the three straps that would attach me to the board—the first around my shoulders, the next around my waist, and the third around my thighs. My head was firmly affixed to the board and my neck locked in place, then I heard the crew give another three count before they pulled me out of the car.
    Now they could examine my hidden injury; one of them took my actual vitals and checked what they were supposed to be on the paper. They administered oxygen (and it smelled like the inside of a vitamin bottle), stabilized the impaling instrument in place, and quickly semi-sealed an occlusive bandage with a flap over the supposed wound. The crew carried me on the board to a reviewing station, where the lead rescuer presented his findings.
    There the reviewers scrutinized every aspect of the operation, from the snugness and stability of my head and neck, as well as the security of my attachment to the board, and reiterated the proper steps—airway first, always, then breathing. A patient with no airway and no respiration—well, it doesn’t matter how competently they’re bandaged and packaged if they’re dead.
    They also asked me if the rescuers were too rough, or if any had talked to me, introduced themselves, taken a moment to explain what was going on—medical and rescue care